Pitango Gelato & Coffee, The Wharf

Pitango is a gelato shop that serves espresso, not a coffee shop that serves gelato. Worth knowing before you walk in. The Wharf location in DC sits in a waterfront stretch of shops, with outdoor tables that put you over the water in the right kind of weather, and the menu is built around Italian-style gelato with the intensity Italian-style gelato is supposed to have. Pistachio. Hibiscus. Pomegranate. Passionfruit. Sour cherry. Turmeric ginger. Coconut. Walnut. The list keeps going.

The order: get the large so you can pick three flavors, sample generously before committing because the staff is patient with that, and put the fresh mint lemonade on the same tray. The coconut and the walnut hold up against any of the headliners. The hibiscus and the passionfruit are the moves for anyone who finds American ice cream flavors too sweet. The pistachio is the headline and stands up to direct comparison with proper Italian shops. The turmeric ginger and the sour cherry are the moves for the customer who wants something they cannot get down the street. Skip the hot chocolate; one customer was pointed about that.

Coffee drinkers should look elsewhere on the Wharf. The espresso here is a side offering and customers do not consistently praise it. The case for Pitango is the gelato, the waterfront tables, and the dessert-stop rhythm of a Wharf walk. Treating the espresso as the draw is the wrong way into the place.

The other honest note is service. The waterfront location runs hot in tourist seasons, and at least one recent visit caught staff being short with customers in a way that read as unprofessional. The setting carries a lot of the experience, so a quiet weekday late afternoon is the right window for getting the version of the visit the location was built for. The outdoor tables face the water and most days that view is the actual product. Walk the Wharf, get a pistachio and a passionfruit in a large cup, sit outside, and treat the espresso as someone else's project.